Urban Outfitters Face Screaming PETA ‘Sheep’ Over Cruel Wool Sales
18 June 2025
Urban Outfitters Face Screaming PETA ‘Sheep’ Over Cruel Wool Sales
York – Shoppers got an eyeful today when a PETA supporter dressed as a “bruised and bloodied” sheep was forcefully pinned down, roughly “sheared” and thrown to the ground in front of the Urban Outfitters store to highlight the violence sheep endure in the wool industry. The provocative display – which coincides with the UK’s shearing season – is the latest action in PETA’s campaign calling on Urban Outfitters to stop selling wool across all its brands, including Anthropologie and Free People.
More images and footage are available here and here
“Every wool jumper and scarf represent sheer agony for sheep, who are routinely beaten and cut to ribbons for their fleece,” says PETA Senior Campaigns Manager Kate Werner. “Sheep suffer all year round for wool and PETA is urging Urban Outfitters to ditch it in favour of the kind vegan materials today’s conscientious consumers want.”
PETA entities’ exposés of more than 150 wool-industry operations on four continents have exposed systemic cruelty to sheep, who have complex emotions, grow depressed if isolated from their flock, and can even detect anxiety in another sheep by observing their face.
A recent PETA Asia-Pacific investigation into shearing sheds in New Zealand that produce ZQ-certified wool – which claims to be the “world’s leading ethical wool brand” – revealed that shearers kicked, beat, and stomped on sheep; sheep were left with gaping wounds that were stitched up without painkillers; and a farmer slit the throat of a struggling, conscious sheep and dumped her body into a trash pit. Sheep fare no better in the U.K.’s wool industry, where PETA entities documented workers violently punching sheep in the face, stamping and standing on their heads and necks, and jabbing the animals with electric clippers.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear” – points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow PETA on Facebook, X, TikTok, or Instagram.
Contact:
Lucy Watson +44 (0) 20 7837 6327; [email protected]
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